the asian blush at work
or, maybe i’m just tan.

If you do a google search for “asian blush,” you’ll notice that a journal entry on my site is ranked at #1. A lot of interesting information has been posted as comments in that entry, so I finally set up a forum for people to properly discuss the problem. Journal comments aren’t a productive way to have a conversation.

[ECHENG.COM] Asian Blush Community Forum
http://echeng.com/asianblush/

Discussion and anecdotes about the Asian Blush/Flush/Glow, including using H2 blockers (e.g. Tagamet, Pepsid, Zantac) and other products to combat its effects.

I’m in the process of building a second data server to mirror the first one, and I already feel like the first one has too little storage space. Argh. Of course, these two mirrored boxes will be sitting right next to each other, so in the event of physical catastrophe I’ll be screwed. Perhaps I’ll mirror the data and then move one of the boxes to a friend’s place and have nightly rsyncs…

Anyway, I’m going to get a Broadcom RAIDCore 8-channel SATA RAID card this time around instead of a 3Ware Escalade controller. And I’ll stick 8 300GB drives in it (400GB drives are still too expensive!), which will give me 2.1 TB of usable RAID 5 storage.

Since my other box only has 1 TB of usable storage, I’ll have to figure out a way to back up the orphaned 1.1 TB, but I suppose I’ll tackle that problem when I get to it. :)

geoff @ carnegie hall!

The main reason I was in New York City was to see Geoff perform at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall with soprano Dawn Upshaw in a show staged by Peter Sellars. The three of them (and others) put on a production of Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments, a piece I imagine to be overwhelmingly difficult to pull off. But they played absolutely brilliantly, and I thoroughly enjoyed the performance. Of course, I had my opinions about various aspects of the production, but Dawn and Geoff were AWESOME. I don’t know how Geoff made his part sound so easy. And you really haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen Dawn Upshaw use two bottles of dishwashing detergent to act out a scene between two lovers. One of the bottles of detergent was a bottle of Dawn Detergent, of course. ;)

After the show there was a little cast party on the Upper West Side, where we socialized and ate Livia’s delicious lasagna. It was great to see Ozzie, who had come into town to see the show, and I met Morris Acevedo, with whom I’ve traded e-mails in the past.

By the way, I have to say that taking photos of everything has been very rewarding. I actually have a picture of <a href=”javascript:LaunchImagePage(‘/music/golijov/images/1017/20021017_155202_1.htm’);”">the moment Peter Sellars met Geoff Nuttall, which was during a tour of Osvaldo’s Passion.

UPDATE New York Times Articles [before, january 9] [review, january 12]

The review of the show was glowing — as good as a review could be. I’m so proud of Geoff! Here’s an excerpt:

Mr. Nuttall, also barefoot, with a wild mane of hair and scruffy beard and wearing torn black jeans and a baggy shirt, was an equal partner in this drama. Playing with stunning technique and volatility, he had the kinetic presence of a charismatic rocker.
- (New York Times)

It was pretty cool because when I arrived in New York (days before the show), Geoff was telling a story about Todd’s offense upon seeing the shoes that Dawn were supposed to wear. His horror eventually resulted in both Geoff and Dawn being barefoot on stage. I love the little backstories in performances. :)

Web coverage from my friends: [meredith: "sweet and poignant and funny and desperately sad..."]

See some pictures:

david katz, at work

So, I had a great time in New York City. I got to see some friends, eat large quantities of overpriced food, and spend hours on the subway trying to get to Queens from the Upper West Side. Last night at 2am, I accidentally boarded the D train going uptown from 59th/Columbus Circle, which, of course, is not the best way to get to Jackson Heights.

In other exciting news, I finally went to LeisurePro, which is the scuba dive gear-equivalent of Adorama and other ultra-orthodox jewish gear establishments (in fact, LeisurePro is owned by Adorama). I peeked through the doorway in the tiny storefront and saw rows upon rows of dive gear goodness in their warehouse. Good thing I don’t have a fetish for dive gear — otherwise, I might have had to check in a bag on the way home. ;)

the stinky

There is no cat like Tony and Ai-Jen’s cat, Professor Plum (AKA “Stinky”, “The Stinky”, “Pinhead”, etc.). Aside from the genetic mutation that gives him six toes on each paw, his lard reserves have grown truly impressive over the years. Stinky is the most social cat I’ve ever encountered. He’s always underfoot, and at full speed he becomes a 25lb lard-like projectile that can quite literally shove you clear out of the way (this happens often if you’re on the way to the kitchen, where his food bowl is located). Tony likened picking Stinky up to picking up a huge water weenie (remember those?).

I like to poke at him with my feet (about 95% of our interaction). And he sure is cute. Finally, here are some photos. Only photos can properly tell the Stinky story.

Vienna Teng and Marika Hughes performed to a full house at The Bitter End tonight. Aside from a tinny-sounding piano, I thought the performance was terrific, and Marika did a great job filling in melodic lines that are normally taken care of by Alan’s violin. There is a short review of the show up in Vienna’s forums. After the show we hopped next door and had Korean and Japanese food with some of Vienna’s friends from a house concert in Connecticut.

See pictures –>

Everyone please thank Alex King for finally “convincing” me to fix my RSS feed, which I had shut down many months ago for not taking private posts into account. It’s now back up, and took a whopping 5 minutes of my time hack in a privacy hack. ;) And during the process, I wiped out some code that displayed the “photo-ness” icon of an entry. But that will be restored when I get back to Oakland.

joechang and rachel

Does anyone get any sleep in New York City? As usual, I’m having problems getting to bed early.

I spent most of yesterday and today with Peter and Karine, and ended up staying over that their place last night. Joechang, Rachel, Wendy, Jason Heller, and the three of us tried to have dinner at Patsy’s (a meal there is quickly becoming a tradition during my visits), but various late parties made that prospect impossible; instead, we ordered to-go and went back to Peter and Karine’s place to eat, which turned out to be more comfortable, anyway. It’s always good to see old friends. And I was totally surrounded by married and engaged couples. I’m going to rename myself, “Eric, the 7th wheel.” Yee-haw.

Oh yeah, it’s clear that Tony’s gi-normous cat/blob Professor Plum misses me. I’ve missed him, too. (read more »)

Just about every week I am asked by a Nikon-shooting friend whether to switch over to Canon or not (often, this decision comes with the migration to digital). I found a good thread over at Rob Galbraith’s site that you should check out, if you have the same question and are already seriously invested in Nikon glass.

If you only have a few lenses, then you effectively haven’t even started collecting; you are effectively starting from scratch. ;)

Just remember that what really matters is the image you end up with, and not the equipment you use to get it. Good equipment is necessary, but for most people it just isn’t going to matter what you use. An $800 Canon Digital Rebel/Nikon D70 combined with an inexpensive lens can still get you images that can easily fill a 2-page magazine spread.

Two evenings ago, I played in a recording session at Stanford’s Memorial Church. Stephen Sano conducted the Stanford Chamber Choral, accompanied by a small pick-up band; we recorded a short Christmas piece by composer Kirk Mechem. It’s always fun to play in the church, and walking through the old quad always conjures up a good amount of nostalgia.

Before the show, I hung out with Heidi Hau and Adam Tow at the Peninsula Creamery, where I ate a bacon burger — a reaction to having a month of Indonesian food, no doubt. Heidi is busy preparing for this year’s Van Cliburn competition (a frightening prospect!), so we’re all going to wish her luck and then leave her alone to practice for the next month. ;) (read more »)

Man. I feel naked/powerless without cephalopod and coral identification books. I knew there were gaps in my marine life id books, but those are huge gaps. So… I ordered some — and they are definitely not cheap. And, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that I don’t have them right now.

don’t know what this is? neither do i. it’s nearly microscopic, too.

Crap. So in my refrigerator, I have (left over from the party):

20 bottles of beer
5 pear ciders
2 bottles of champagne
a small tub of glazed ham
a nice fruit cobbler

… and I’m leaving for New York tomorrow morning. Someone come pick it all up!! :)

Hey, guys. I’m giving two three-hour workshops at the Boston Sea Rovers Clinic this year (March 5-6, 2005). I’ve set up a page on my site where you can find more information. Registration in advance is preferred!

For a long time now, I’ve been trying to figure out the latin-rooted word for “shark-like.” Out of desperation, I sent an e-mail to my shark scientist friend Dr. Samuel H Gruber, who replied that he knew of no such word, but that we should just invent one:

Lupine is to wolf as Squaline is to shark

“Squaline” is not to be confused with “squalene,” which is defined: “an acyclic hydrocarbon C30H50 that is widely distributed in nature (as a major component of sebum and in shark-liver oils) and is a precursor of sterols (as cholesterol).”

Both words come from the latin squalus, a sea fish. In Italian, the word for shark is squalo, but according to a dictionary I found online, the latin word for shark is pistris. Unfortunately, making an -ine adjective from pistris just doesn’t seem to be as appropriate.

A big fish, showing a rather squaline look.

So TREO #4 is on its way to me. Yesterday, my TREO went into “No Signal” mode in the middle of a phone call, and since then I’ve been unable to make calls without the phone dropping signal altogether. It’s also been crashing more often in phone mode, and did a surprise reset on me today. Yippee. Like the last two times, a new old phone is on being sent to me. And like last time, it will meet me in New York via Tony’s office.

I love the phone when it works, but I’m really starting to hate PalmOne. Given the 100% failure rate of Treo phones (from what I’ve seen), it’s ironic that their website says that they “make the handhelds & smartphones that millions of people depend on every day.” In order to substantiate that claim, they would need to bundle a stable, backup phone with every Treo they sell.

I suppose it is the duty of early adopters to pave the technology road with little bits of pain.

06 Jan 2005 UPDATE Received my replacement TREO only two days later (here in New York City). Let’s hear it for the WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH! Yep. I’ve had 3 crashes in 6 hours.

cello power

I’m canning Exhibition Engine. It might be one of the cleanest and fully-featured single-user gallery programs out there, but every gallery program I’ve tried is clumsy if you care about tagging images with properly organized metadata. Also, EE 1.5RC4 has been out for eight months with no updates, and I’m assuming that support for the product has been dropped. It doesn’t use a proper templating engine anyway, so no real visual changes can be done without breaking the possibility of upgrading. It’s really too bad, because it has so many nice features — just a little more work could have made the product very good.

As an alternative, I spent half and hour this morning and hacked b2 to include my images in individual entries. :) This is sort of a test post, but in it you can see photos of music folk and photos of Syndromes + the other Eric’s visit.

new year’s party

I’ve had house guests for a few days. The other Eric, Mr. Syndromes, and Aaron (with his lovely wife, Natalie) have been in town, and I’ve spent much of my time with them. I’ve also been trying to get settled after being gone for nearly a month; as usual, a mountain of mail was here to greet me, and items in my abandoned to-do list didn’t magically check themselves off.

Vienna wrote me an e-mail several days before the 31st (while I was in Indonesia):

do you have plans for new year’s? i’m thinking of trying to assemble a semi-musical get-together. maybe some pop musicians and some classical folk, so we could jam and/or read through stuff. drink wine and watch a movie or play games or whatever. your place (and your presence, of course) would be ideal…

…and a party plan was born. An evite and two days of unpacking and organizing later (round 2 — I had to deal with about 15 boxes from Emile’s place), a bunch of us gathered in my loft to celebrate the arrival of 2005. (read more »)